Twenty-nine Michiana area high school students and several
harried advisers are frantically putting the finishing touches
on the first edition of Beyond Our Control, the student-produced
weekly comedy series. The program opens its ninth season Saturday,
January 24 at 6:00 PM EST on WNDU-TV, Channel 16.
The award-winning "TV show about TV" is now the oldest and
most widely-acclaimed educational television project for high
school students. Representing 13 Indiana and Michigan schools,
the students have been meeting since mid-September preparing
the program. The teen-agers write, produce, direct and perform
the show, working under the guidance of advisers from the
staff of WNDU-TV and a number of graduate consultants.
The organization functions as part of South Bend's Junior
Achievement program, part of a national program of economics
and business education for high school students. The group
was founded by Wm. Thomas Hamilton, Executive Vice President
and General Manager of the WNDU Stations, and functions as
a working model corporation.
Created in 1968, Beyond Our Control takes a jaded
look at television each week, joining an American family as
they settle down for a session in front of the tube, switching
channels from program to program. With the focus on soap operas,
made-for-TV movies, local talk shows, and plenty of commercials,
the program is quite literally about television programming
"beyond our control."
Beyond Our Control is planning its usual peculiar
assortment of parodies for the 1976 season. Among the choicer
items: a Walt Disney-style "true life adventure" titled "The
Legend of Bimbo;" a four-chapter mythological serial titled
"Herculon's Mightiest Chore;" a complex television fantasy,
detailing the adventures of a young TV addict literally pulled
into the world of television; a World War One "flying aces"
movie; a pseudo-philosophical drama titled "Hindsight," involving
a group of strangers in a waiting room who may--or may not--be
dead; and a number of other extremely humorous bits--to be
announced just as soon as they are thought up.
Student directors of the show this year are Kate Doherty
of LaSalle; Tom Mantke of Niles; Jim Poyser of Washington
and Dave Sutton of Washington. Sutton is also the show's Production
Manager, assisted by Ellen Akins of LaSalle and Chris Dudley
of Washington.
